


if only for today (i am unafraid)

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Cheating, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:51:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Both of them are aware of it, but Santana is the only one to ever acknowledge it. Quinn isn’t sure whether it makes her meaner, or braver."</p>
            </blockquote>





	if only for today (i am unafraid)

Both of them are aware of it, but Santana is the only one to ever acknowledge it. Quinn isn’t sure whether it makes her meaner, or braver.

“I need some passion,” Santana utters one night, aiming the words at thin air around them rather than at Quinn, “or else my love would fade.” She adds something under her breath about boredom in routine, but Quinn has stopped listening, staring instead at emptiness out the window. She wonders why it is she can’t be both.

+++

It’s the first hours of morning when she makes the mistake, her heart beating harsh against Santana’s cheek and she pleads, almost in a single exhale: “Do you love me?”

“As much as I can,” comes the answer, breathy and low after a beat.

The next morning the bed, the flat, are cold and Santana is gone.

+++

It’s three empty, slow days before Santana crashes there again, breath stinking of booze and attempting eye contact through misty, lust-lidded eyes.  She talks about wanting her, needing it  _rough_ and  _fast_ , but even as she strips and Quinn’s heartbeat shifts and quickens, she can’t help hearing the words echo seamlessly inside her mind:  _“I need some passion,”_  and how it is clear what Santana has been doing three days long. She knows it’s lame and childish but she dreams of settling down together, a sweeter, quieter kind of love.

She sleeps alone on the couch that night, trembling although not cold.

+++

She wishes Santana wouldn’t act the same once sober.

+++

Quinn goes out and stays overnight at a friend’s, and when she comes back she has twenty-seven missed calls and the whole bedroom reeks of sex, the smell hot and liquid and disturbing.

There are two mugs in the sink and it takes her eleven minutes to dump Santana’s belongings out the house and onto the landing.

+++

After five days she is forced to change her number; even at night the phone doesn’t stop, doesn’t give her a minute’s break. She turns it off during the night but then it’s the landline that keeps ringing and ringing. She switches to the answering machine but switches back after thirty seconds of hearing her voice.

She adds that to her mental list of things she changed for Santana.

+++

Santana starts slipping notes in her mailbox then, roughly etched words, and broken sentences, by a familiar hand.

+++

_I can’t be anyone but myself, Q._

+++

Winter break slips fast by, and she’s grateful for her sister’s soothing words, but she’s impatient to escape her family’s clutches and recover her own life, if possible cleansed of drama.

It has been so long since she has felt anything close to wanted.

+++

Her hands tremble and the note flutters and falls, seemingly light when it seemed to Quinn it weighted a hundred, a thousand pounds.

It’s a string of words, of begging sentences, the closest she’s ever got to understanding Santana.

+++

_I thought I wanted sex when in fact I wanted you._

_I can’t give you more than what I have._

_Let me take it all back._

_I can’t hear, I can’t listen to what you won’t say._

_Am I being honest or scared?_

_I’m never sure you wouldn’t trade me for a mirror image of yourself._

_I’ll never be the way you want me to—but I can try, make my own attempt at being better, if you’ll let me._

_You think you love me more than I do, but I just don’t in the same way._

_I just need you to meet me halfway._

_I’ll never want what you want, but at least I can want you._

_You’ll never want what I want, but I’m willing to compromise—as much as I can._

+++

She opens her door for the first time in weeks and as she makes room for Santana to fit again in her life, as Santana settles and stays, for this moment at least they don’t have to work for it.

And it might not be forever, it might not be ideal, but it’s alright by them and as the flat begins to enclose their life, day-to-day, walls covered with taped pictures, taped maps, their whole life exposed and flowing uninterrupted, seemingly unchanging, the quiet love and the passionate love each of them wished for mend into one.


End file.
